🔔 Establish a routine 🔔 Issue #57

Now most of us are back at work after a long break, I personally find it a good opportunity to look at honing my routine.

This starts at home. One thing I do now is charge my phone in the living room. This means that I can relax in the evening and in the morning when I wake, my first thought isn’t about who has contacted me, it’s let’s get a brew on! ☕️

At work, I’m trying to clarify what all those meetings are meant to achieve in the week. Do I need to be at them? Are there action points and people responsible to carry them out?

Putting structure in my life means that I can, over the long term, iterate to improve! Check out how other people hack their routines for more ideas.

These blueprints are something I stumbled upon this week. Usually, I plot out with the team the journey a user would typically make, but this template highlights questions such as “what if a user wants to return an item they’ve bought” and other stages that they would go through. I wonder if this could be brought together with Jobs To Be Done, to tell us how to go about improving them? Interesting stuff.

The new version of the Wayfindr Open Standard is out, designed to “open up a world where vision impaired people are no longer held back by their sight loss.” Great to see ustwo innovating in this space.

Free delivery and returns are unsustainable for many entrepreneurs, who are turning away from offering online shopping

This article is more about bricks and mortar stores having an online presence, rather than pure-play online or online with some stores (or clubhouses!). It tackles the tricky subject of handling returns. On a survey, “58% said a retailer’s returns policy has an effect on their decision to make a purchase online – but not one that they want to pay for.”

Small online business owners and eCommerce pros share their digital to-dos for 2017. Top tip: study your mobile experience - that’s usually where the biggest opportunity lies. The last two items I bought on my phone used Apple Pay. Pleasing for the customer and incredibly friction-free!

Alicia Bamford’s cycle-wear brand for women has an awesome new collection out. “The Col de l’Iseran Collection” is a thoughtful, well-considered and beautiful range which works very well together. Collect them all!

A piece by cyclingindustry.news about how to create a better experience in-store, acknowledging that online takes the lion’s share of customers attention and money. Time to clear some of those bikes and put in a coffee machine!

In 1973 Arthur C. Clarke pointed out that any sufficiently advanced technology is going to be indistinguishable from magic. We live in times of real magic. Tim LeRoy of Dootrix looks into his crystal ball 🔮